from President Roosevelt: "Dear Will, I am disappointed, of course, that the situation is such as to make you feel it unwise to leave, because, exactly as no man can quite do your work in the islands, so no man can quite take your place as the new member of the Court. But, if possible, your refusal on the ground you give makes me admire you and believe in you more than ever." But about one month later President Roosevelt wrote to Taft, the letter being received January 6, 1903: "Dear Will, I am awfully sorry, old man, but after faithful effort for a month to try to arrange matters on the basis you wanted, I find that I shall have to bring you home and put you on the Supreme Court. I am very sorry. I have the greatest confidence in your judgment, but after all, old fellow, if you will permit me to say so, I am President and see the whole field.... After the most careful thought, after the most earnest effort as to what you desired and thought best, I have come, irrevocably, to the decision that I shall appoint you to the Supreme Court in the vacancy caused by Judge Shiras' resignation.. I am very sorry if what I am doing displeases you, but as I said, old man, this is one of the cases where the President, if he is fit for his position, must take the responsibility."

In answer to this letter Taft sent this cable to the President: "Recognize soldier's duty to obey orders." But "I presume on our personal friendship, even in the face of your letter, to make one more appeal, in which I lay aside wholly my strong personal disinclination to leave work of intense interest half-done." These people are convinced "that I am their friend and stand for a policy of confidence in them and belief in their future and for

extension of self-government as they show themselves worthy. . . . Announcement of withdrawal pending settlement of church question, economic crisis, and formative political period when opinions of all parties are being slowly moulded for the better, will, I fear, give impression that change of policy is intended because other reasons for action will not be understood. ... I feel it is my duty to say this. If your judgment is unshaken I bow to it." To this came a cable from President Roosevelt, "All right, stay where you are. I shall appoint someone else to the Court." 1

One of the most interesting matters in American history during the first two decades of the twentieth century is the relation between Roosevelt and Taft; to end the Supreme Court incident a violation of chronology in the narrative is needed. We therefore go on to 1906 when Taft was Secretary of War in President Roosevelt's Cabinet. He was again offered a position on the Supreme Court bench but in a personal interview showed unwillingness to accept it. Shortly afterwards, on March 15, 1906, Roosevelt wrote to Taft a letter in which he said: "My dear Will, it is preeminently a matter in which no other man can take the responsibility of deciding for you what is best for you to do. .. But I appreciate, as every thoughtful man must, the importance of the part to be played by the Supreme Court in the next twenty-five years. . . There are strong arguments against your taking this justiceship. In the first place, my belief is that, of all the men who have appeared so far, you are the man, who is most likely to receive the Republican nomination,

1 Mrs. W. H. Taft, Recollections, 262 et seq.

and who is, I think, the best man to receive it. It is not a light thing to cast aside the chance of the Presidency, even though, of course, it is a chance, however, a good one." Taft considered the offer over four months and then wrote to the President (July 30, 1906) from Murray Bay, Canada, where he was taking his summer vacation, declining the offer, saying: "I would much prefer to go on the Supreme Bench for life than to run for the Presidency. But circumstances seem to me to have imposed something in the nature of a trust to me personally that I should not discharge by now succeeding Justice Brown. In the nature of things the trust must end with this administration and one or two years is short to do much. Yet the next session of Congress may result in much for the benefit of the Filipino and, it seems to me, it is my duty to be in the fight." 1

While still in the Philippines Taft twice put aside the coveted place and remained in the islands, the climate of which was unsuitable. Before he appeared before the Senate Committee in Washington, on leave for the state of his health, and before these first two offers were made to him of a supreme judgeship, he had submitted to two surgical operations and was in bed for a number of weeks, but maintained "his usual cheerful frame of mind." 2 His wife, too, was debilitated and needed a change to America. Finally, at the end of 1903, he left for Washington to accept the position of Secretary of War. He was popular with the native inhabitants; they loved him and their anxiety when he was ill knew no bounds.

1 J. B. Bishop, Roosevelt and His Time, ii. 99 et seq.

Mrs. W. H. Taft, Recollections, 229; Unofficial Letters, Edith Moses,

At the time when President Roosevelt insisted on his acceptance of the second offer of supreme judgeship and it leaked out that Taft was going to leave the Philippines, there was a sincere demonstration in his favor in the city of Manila which was placarded with the sentiment in various languages, "We want Taft." In his farewell speech he declared that the Philippines were for the Filipinos. It need not occasion surprise that President Roosevelt in a review of this colonial administration said that Taft's work in the Philippines is as great as Lord Cromer's in Egypt.

The cost of the Philippines by the end of 1907 is estimated at $300,000,000; besides, the cost per annum of the native scouts and the 12,000 American troops was about 14 millions.2 The government of the islands is self-supporting, wrote Governor Forbes, and this, according to Blount, is true except for the expense of the scouts and the American soldiers. In February, 1902, Taft told a Senate committee: "I think the intervention of the United States in the Philippine Islands is the best possible thing that could have happened to the Filipino people but. . . for the people of the United States it probably

1 Mrs. W. H. Taft, Recollections, 267.

...

The American Occupation of the Philippines, Blount, 600. In his report of Dec. 1, 1902, Root wrote: "Since the ending of the insurrection and the complete establishment of civil government in the Philippines, it has been possible to make a farther reduction of the Army and on October 24, 1902, an order was made reducing the enlisted strength to 59,866.. The effect of carrying out this order will be to bring the American troops stationed in the Philippines down to an enlisted strength of 13,480." In his report of Dec. 7, 1903, he said, "The American troops, in the Philippines consisted of 843 officers and 14,667 enlisted men. . . . The number can still further be reduced." I have assumed that the number was reduced to 12,000 as Blount was very unfriendly to the American administration.

would be better that chance had not thrown the Filipino people under our guidance and protection." And during May, 1907, in a speech at St. Louis, he admitted that the islands had been a financial drain.2

W. Cameron Forbes, when Vice-Governor, wrote in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1909: "We have completed the separation of Church and State, buying out from the religious orders their large agricultural properties, which are now administered by the government for the benefit of the tenants. We have put the finances on a sound and sensible basis. . . . We have established schools throughout the archipelago, teaching upward of half a million children." And Forbes affirmed that with some natural exceptions it was "safe to travel everywhere throughout the islands without carrying a weapon. We," he continued, "have given the Filipinos almost complete autonomy in their municipalities. ... The record of the Americans in the Philippines is one of which no American need be ashamed. We are casting off the shackles which held down the laboring classes of the Philippines and, with the laboring classes raised, we are raising all the people to a higher and nobler plane. We may not as yet have given independence to the Philippines but we are certainly giving independence to the Filipinos." 3

All the money raised by internal taxation was spent on the islands. There was absolutely no exploitation. "As I look back," wrote Elihu Root in 1916 in a preface

1 Hearings on Affairs in the Philippine Islands, Part 1, 406. * Blount, 357.

Article entitled "A Decade of American Rule in the Philippines." The citations down to "weapon," are made by Blount in his American Occupation of the Philippines.